I'm back in England now. Why would I want to write about my holiday? I was wearing shorts, for Pete's sake! I packed eight pairs of socks and didn't wear any of them. It was a different world.
And now I need to cast my mind back to day NINE?! The number is meaningless. I'm sure I was still alive on day nine, but I wasn't the same person I am now. I'm wearing socks today. To not wear socks is unthinkable.
But I can't abide a tale half-told. I can't stop my holiday account at day eight. It would be improper. And would confuse future-me. He'd wonder where the time went.
So here it is. Day nine was, what, Saturday? I was probably wearing shorts and wishing I could trim my moustache. But you can't take scissors on a plane or buy them once you arrive. Bin Laden deserved to die, if only for that.
Here are some things.
We went to a place called Göcek. It's one of those yacht places. You know, with, like, a wet bit where the boats go, and then a dryer bit where there are shops and cafes and mooring posts and people staring at yachts? A yacht place.
(Do you know what the sad thing about this story is? It happened on Day Eight. But I'm so confused, I'm writing about it here.)
Apparently, the rich and famous go there. Our tour guide said that sometime in the late 90s, Sting and Dustin Hoffman visited there. In the same yacht.
I don't get yachts.
I'm not totally immune to the allure of a millionaire's lifestyle. I can see why people would like luxury cars and mansions, and why they'd like to have a diamond-encrusted George Foreman Grill.
But yachts are stupid. How can a tiny boat be luxurious? It's just a bobbing caravan. Get over yourself, Hoffman.
If you chose to get on a boat, you have abdicated all authority anyway. You can drown at a moment's notice. Every seaman is nothing but Neptune's bitch. A rich movie star on a boat is just shark food in an expensive suit.
If I was a millionaire, I wouldn't want to be robbed of my dignity. I'd stay on land at all times. People can look up to you if you're on land. Nobody looks up to boat people.
Stick with what brung you to the dance. If you're rich, you made your fortune on land. Stay there.
Unless you're Daryl Hannah. She has one fin in each camp, and a stupidly-spelled name.
When we were in Göcek we had tall frozen lemonades, with lots of fruit. They were the most refreshing drinks. Mmm. I'd like one right now.
Also, earlier on the same day (EIGHT - NOT EVEN NINE), we went to a treetop cafe in the mountains. We had Turkish tea and saw dragonflies and horses. But that's not what I'm going to write about, because I'm not a square.
We'd walked down some rocky stairs to photograph a waterfall or a unicorn or something, when our tour group started moving on. We went to join them, but an old woman was coming down the stairs, blocking our way. She was having difficulty making the descent. Her family was helping her. She had a walking stick. She was taking ages.
If this was a more interesting story, we might have found ourselves cut adrift from the rest of our group, forced to climb through the mountains and find our own way home. But that didn't happen. We just waited.
When we got to the top of the stairs, one of the Turkish cafe staff (who had been watching our predicament) said to me in perfect English, "one day, we will all be old."
He was right. It was a nice thing to say. He obviously understood the situation and didn't want us to feel angry or annoyed at the woman. He recognised that she was only human, and our having to wait a few extra seconds wouldn't make much difference. There but for the grace of God, go us.
We agreed with him. One day, we will all be old. He was right. We shared a moment of human empathy that crossed national boundaries. At that moment, we were united by our appreciation of the fragility of life.
Then he said, "one day, we will all be dead".
Now, I thought this was one sentence too far. It's true of course. We will all be dead. And it seems like a continuation of his previous thought. It's an understanding and wise statement. But it didn't really apply.
The slow woman was old, but she wasn't dead. Empathising about her age was warm and humanistic. Empathising about her death seemed premature.
"One day, we will all be old" is a beautiful and melancholy piece of language.
"One day, we will all be dead" sounds like a threat.
Of course, I agreed, and hurried off. I'd gone from moved to unsettled in about five seconds.
But the cafe worker was right. Because, as we looked back over the beautiful scenery and watched the river flow down the rocks, much as the the river of time does flow, we saw, through the dappled sunlight and the vivid forest flowers, that the old woman had fallen down the stairs and died.
One day, we will all die. He was right. It was an appropriate thing to say. As I looked at her corpse and her broken walking stick, I thought: "that will be me one day".
He winked.
Some of that story isn't true. You can decide for yourself.
Anyway, where was I...?
Oh yes. Day nine.
Nothing.
Day ten. Nothing. Some swimming, I guess.
Day eleven. We came home.
The journey was long. Our bus to the airport left at 10pm. Our flight was at 2am. Our bus on the way back was at 5:05am GMT, which would be 7:05 TMT (Turkish Man Time). We got home at about 6:30am GMT, then had to go out again.
It was not unexhausting.
The flight was strange. People were sleeping, but I was not. I couldn't get comfortable, even though there were lots of spare seats, as it wasn't a full plane.
My arm kept... being there. Humans should evolve retractable limbs. I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
Humans should evolve retractable limbs.
There was an eerie light everywhere. My fatigued brain started playing tricks on me. The clouds looked like the sea. There was a thin blue line of dawn on the horizon that never grew, because we were flying away from it. It couldn't catch us, but was shaking its fist.
The soundtrack of my delirium was this short song by Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe fame). It's about nettles:
This song played in my head about five thousand hundred million times.
Nettles - also like the band The Police...
There was a child sleeping across the seats in front of us. I was worried that my stupid non-retractable arms and knees would be disturbing her, so I was semi-frozen in shaky discomfort like a shit statue.
Lucy got some sleep, lying across the seats next to me. She had a shawl draped across her, which took on an odd luminescence in the artificial night light. The shawl rose and fell, and seemed to me to be undulating like a wedding-white jellyfish.
Nettles! Nettles!
Eventually, we landed in that land of my forefathers: Gatwick.
I slept on the coach on the way home, leaning against nothing, my slumbering head flopping around like a melon on a weak spring. I retained verticality by biting the inside of my mouth at regular intervals. It was relaxing.
By this point it was technically day thirteen, but who's counting?
This holiday journal has never been a systematic catalogue of events. It's more of a series of impressions, bound together by hyphens. If you want to give a sense of an experience, there's no point in trying to replicate it. You have to just say things like "you know how sometimes it's all a bit fleeeuuurrrgg?".
AND PEOPLE SAY YES I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.
Oh - also we had a big bread that was like a steam-whale. That was day twelve, but who's counting?
I can't believe it's all over. It was so interminable and so brief, like a mayfly opera.
Time to put away the shorts.
Time to put on all the socks.
Time to post photos to Facebook to tell the people - who, unlike you, dear reader, are not my real friends - that we had a well good time and look at my muddy torso and don't you wish you were here? Don't you wish you were there? Don't you wish you were me?
And the Facebook people will be all like "yes, I do wish I was here/there/you. *like*".
But you, dear reader, are my real friends. And you know in your heart of hearts, that whether you're there or here is nether here nor there. The only thing you're sure of - from reading this very blog - is that you'll never wish you were me.
Would that you were.
Would that you would.
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